1629: humongous May 31, 2019

Most people will probably have experienced jumbling together two words by mistake while trying to articulate one. In the case of 'humongous', the process through which it came about isn't exactly like that, but it isn't totally like a normal compound either. The word originated in the 1970's, and is thought to be a blend of 'huge' and 'monstrous', but as should be evident, the term did not emerge just from those two words, as it the stress and syllable structures are not totally the same. It is believed that 'humongous' was influenced from the same stress-pattern as 'stupendous'. Though there are plenty of compounds and portmanteaus in English, not all of them maintain each element as it originally was.

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